Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Netcode and Why Players Are Talking About It
The Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War open beta went live for Playstation 4, Xbox, and PC on October 17 giving players across every platform their first taste of the 17th installment in the iconic FPS franchise.
I’ve been watching the community feedback on YouTube and the r/blackopscoldwar subreddit closely since Friday and have noticed one term appear again and again in beta players’ gripes about the game — Netcode.
The phrase is littered throughout articles, threads, and videos about the Black Ops Cold War beta. Comments like “bullets literally disappear due to dodgy netcode” and “the netcode needs some attention this year” certainly paint a picture, but I still haven’t seen a single player explain what the term means.
So let’s break down netcode and talk about why it’s so important in a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Netcode is a generic and unscientific term used to describe networking in online games. That is — how your console or PC connects to the game servers in any given online title. You don’t need to be a network engineer to understand netcode either. If you’ve ever given any thought to things like ping, tick rate, dedicated servers, or hit registration then you’ve already spent some time examining netcode.
In the vast majority of multiplayer games, netcode is of no concern to most players. Gamers with a solid internet connection can typically count on their games “just working” without lag or other interruptions. This makes it all the more jarring when AAA game like Call of Duty’s netcode fails, because it’s an issue that is entirely out of the player’s control.
Netcode problems in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War are often realized at pivotal moments like close-quarters gunfights or when calling in score streaks. It’s a brain-breaking moment every Call of Duty fan is familiar with. You unload an entire clip into an enemy, you watch those hit markers flash, but somehow you still die. Adding insult to injury, it’s all followed up by a kill cam that totally misrepresents the engagement.
Good netcode is dependent on the decisions a developer makes when architecting the multiplayer functionality in a game. PC Gamer wrote a great article about what goes into designing good netcode that I definitely recommend for a more technical breakdown.
Now that we have a better picture of what netcode is — should we be worried about Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War releasing this year with messy and broken netcode? The answer to that question is probably a resounding NO.
In 2019, news leaked that Sledgehammer Games would handoff work on the 2020 Call of Duty to the team at Treyarch. This last minute change halved the amount of time developers got to work on Cold War and forced a significant amount of crunch to get the game ready in time for the series’ holiday season launch window. On top of that, the global COVID-19 pandemic likely made Cold War the first game in Call of Duty history to be developed by a fully remote team.
It’s been a brutal year for everyone and it’s impressive Treyarch was able to pull this game together in time for the launch of Sony and Microsoft’s next-generation consoles. The beta is undeniably rough around the edges and the game’s launch could be much of the same, but I have no doubt that one of the biggest franchises in the world will get its act (and servers) together in due time.
Anyone can be an armchair game developer, but Cold War’s beta weekend is an opportunity for the real engineers to get feedback and start working to make adjustments to the game. Keep telling them know how you feel and let’s see how things look on November 13.
